WSJ - Saying No to School Laptops

Submitted by pnelson on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 1:12pm.
This Wall Street Joural article: Saying No to School Laptops was Slashdotted today. The article is an interesting read as are the responses on Slashdot which is a VERY tech friendly site. A successful 1:1 implementation would have to address many of these issues.

Slashdot

Submitted by Greg Lund-Chaix on Thu, 08/31/2006 - 4:24pm.

As an avid Slashdot reader and occasional poster, I have to say that one does have to take comments posted there with a huge grain of salt.

For some reason sites like Slashdot and Digg attract an inordinate number of posts from the extreme fringes. Yes, there is often insightful and intelligent debate there, but more often it is lost in a storm of completely irrelevant and usually way off-base posts. Finding the interesting comments is usually a futile attempt. The news stories themselves are interesting and worthwhile, but I've long ago given up trying to slog through the comments looking for intelligent life.

Yes, weathering the storm of irrelevance...

Submitted by pnelson on Fri, 09/01/2006 - 7:38am.

You're right on target Greg. Part of the battle in a successful 1:1 is getting past uninformed public perception. Many of the posts in the Slashdot replies fall under that category. It's important to not underestimate the need for buy-in with school partners. At first glance (and that's what your seeing in the /. responses,) 1:1 can be seen as extravagant, even in a tech friendly crowd. PR and good information can help change this perception.

;-)

SRI Data

Submitted by thomas glover on Mon, 09/04/2006 - 3:11pm.

Paul, et al

I found the below to be of interest and may hold some of the data relevant to our current discussions. There is a significant (hopefully) report on technology’s effectiveness in education to be published by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. titled: National Study of the Effectiveness of Educational Technology Interventions (http://edtech.mathematica-mpr.com). SRI’s Center for Technology and Learning (http://www.ctl.sri.com) is one of the principle participants of the study; SRI’s web page for the Methematica study is: http://www.ctl.sri.com/projects/displayProject.jsp?Nick=eeti. There appears to be much of interest on the SRI site, although some of it is gratis on the web, much is or was proprietary and only available to the public for purchase in book form. I wonder if since SRI is to be the primary evaluator on the 1:1 project under consideration if perhaps we/ODE could access a preliminary copy of a rough draft or even the rough data?